


Us and Ours

by tatooedlaura



Series: Life, Part 3 [4]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 00:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13469970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Making things belong to 'us' and be 'ours' isn't so hard after all ...





	Us and Ours

Their first Sunday dinner was hard. The adults knew what had happened but the kids sailed through in happy oblivion, Scully glad for this. It made hugging, laughing, joking, piggy-back riding, baseball-playing, sidewalk chalking easier to take. They treated her like Aunt Dana and so glad for it, she slipped them all $5 just because. When Mulder questioned her considerably lighter wallet, she told him to give her a kiss, move along, and slipping him his own $5, she smiled, “because they made today easier.”

“Did I make today easier?”

“I just gave you five bucks, didn’t I?”

“I’d have settled for $3.”

Running a hand from his elbow to his fingers, sliding them confidently together, zippered in comfort, “I’d have given you $10.”

Later on, as they were driving home, Scully, feeling semi-human for the first time in days, “what should I do about my apartment?”

“I say we pay somebody double what you paid the kids and have them pack it up for you while we go find a brand-spanking new place without any kind of history attached to it, maybe owned by an older couple who lived an uneventful life and at worst, had a backlog of late fines at the library.” Kneading the steering wheel, “I just don’t want you going back there … for anything.”

For once, she relished in someone else making that choice for her, “library fines?”

“Big ones. $0.50 … maybe even a dollar.”

&&&&&&&&&

Once they were back at Mulder’s, Scully looked at him, dead set on doing this whole moving in together thing that they hadn’t actually labeled as such and would probably never label as such, just wake up one morning a few years down the road, give each other a grin and ask if the other has done any laundry in awhile, inquiring while she chucked her shoes under the coat rack, “and how do we go about finding an apartment in this city without blood on the walls and a history to match?”

Pulling his phone out, he gave her a wiggling, eyebrow grin, dialing without a word until, “hey, it’s me, I need a favor … I need you to find me a two-bedroom apartment, decent size, fairly cheap, no murder, mobsters, psychotics, abductions, blood, guts or gore attached … yeah … yeah, we’re gonna live in sin … little bit of hers and a little bit of mine … no, we’d like windows … okay, thanks.” Waving his now silent phone at Scully, “we’ll have two lists in about an hour.”

The only thing that really felt even remotely odd about that conversation was, “two lists?”

“Yeah, one of apartments available now and the other of places where extremely old people live but are in the hospital so they might die ‘conveniently soon’ as Frohike explained it.” Shrugging against every terrible iota of verbalization in that phrase, “Byers makes good chili, so I keep them.”

Turning to head to the kitchen, she called back, a lace of amusement ringing her words, “I think you should explain over dinner what’s your little bit of sin and what you think is mine.”

&&&&&&&&

Good to their word, Mulder had two lists in his email within the hour and the pair spent the rest of the evening argu … pardon … debating aspects of each one, Mulder for satellite dish placement, Scully for lack of elevator and grocery carrying futures. In the end, they found six that neither hated completely and calling it a day, dropped to bed, Scully nudging Mulder onto his side, playing big spoon or, as he’d joked not too recently in the past, jetpack. Arm comfortably under his, thumb stroking his bicep in an intermittent rhythm, her voice shivered his ear, hairs standing on end from stem to stern, “I’m going to live in sin with you.”

“More to the point, I’m going to live in sin with you.”

After a slow pause, she scooted even closer, lips brushing his neck, “you’re picturing me in Catholic school plaid, aren’t you?”

“And an untucked white button-down shirt and possibly a hanging loose burgundy tie.”

Tongue running down his skin, light flicker carrying the weight of the world, “knee socks?”

“And a pure, unadulterated Scully attitude.” Rolling, scooting, shifting until he was facing her, fingers running over cheekbone, “I love you so much and never want to push you into anything you’re not up to doing yet but I gotta say, that whole image of you is working pretty well for me.”

Kissing first him forehead, then his mouth, she smiled as she went in for a second round, “come here.”

&&&&&&&&&&

The next two weeks proved a chaotic mess of packing and renting and working; Mulder having settled for a less than ideal satellite dish spot while Scully agreed to a second-floor walkup sans elevator but with a corner unit and no one living above, private entrance bonus, “I won’t hear stomping at 3am anymore.”

“Oh, woman, there’ll be stomping and Irish jigging and jump roping if I have anything to say about it.”

Pinching his lips shut as she walked by, surveying her newly rented spacious domain formerly owned by a retiring school teacher and her rocket scientist husband with nary a library fine or traffic ticket between them, “you will have nothing to say about it.”

“Then you have to let me paint the bathroom orange … that’s the deal.”

“Dark red?”

“White with yellow spots.”

“Forest green and pink.”

“Purple stripes.”

“Cobalt blue bottom half, white upper with chair rail.”

“Sold. Let’s go buy some paint.”

“Mulder.”

Halting and slowly turning, eyebrow cocked, “Scully.”

“How about orange for the second bedroom?”

“Pumpkin!”

As she motioned for him to come back, she wiggled a finger to get him down to her level, then kissed the dent in his chin, followed by his upper lip, “burnt orange.”

“Whatever. Orange!”

&&&&&&&&

Painting party commenced the following weekend, Mulder characteristically finding an x-file that was ripe for the picking Friday afternoon yet uncharacteristically leaving it on his desk for Monday, discovering with a slight shock, that he had better things to do with his time.

And better people to do them with.

He pondered this for a few moments, then, looking up at Scully where she stood hunched over a table, pen in hand, future crick in neck, he thanked an actual god for her, shuffled over and kissed her cheek, “ready to go home yet?”

Without looking up, she bumped his hip, “give me two minutes then I just need to drop this off on our way out and we’ll be free.”

Bumping back, “you’re pretty.”

“So are you, now go away and let me finish.”

Grabbing his coat, he gave her a half hug and a lip brush to the temple as he moved by, “I’ll meet you up in the lobby when you’re done.”

She found him 10 minutes later, surveying the final paint touches to the reconstructed lobby, leaning on a wall, frame relaxed, arms crossed.

She was going home with him tonight.

And she didn’t care who knew it.

With a smile, she approached, watched his grin spread like wildfire, eye light up, “ready to go?”

“With you, always.”

&&&&&&&&&&&

By Sunday night, the new apartment was painted within an inch of its life, 15 hand prints immortalized around the front door at Scully’s suggestion, Dave out of town on business, Bill at his base but Skinner filling in, a surprisingly detailed painter with a knack for steering children away from painting cupboards, carpets and each other … mostly.

Windows open, fans on, they ate pizza on the floor, admiring their work while fighting falling asleep on piles of dirty napkins and each other. Scully kicked them all out once the food had been inhaled and finally alone with Mulder, she leaned back against the front door, blowing errant, paint splattered hair from her eyes, “good lord.”

Knowing he needed to get her back to his packing box filled apartment soon or she’d collapse and be useless the rest of the evening, he took her hand, pulling her gently towards him, then walking down the hall, stopping in the doorway to the bedroom, “you know what this is?”

“The bedroom.”

“No … it’s Our bedroom. Ours. You hear the capital letter?”

Heart thudding for a moment, she nodded, “Ours.”

“Yeah, where Our bed is going to go and with a closet for Our stuff.”

“Capital letters are good things.”

Pulling her lightly right, they went in the bathroom, “this is Our bathroom where we’ll keep Our toothbrushes and toilet paper and ratty towels I refuse to part with but you’ll want to pitch in the trash immediately.”

“But they’ll be Our ratty towels and I like Our ratty towels.”

Not answering, he took her to the spare room, “this is where we’ll put all Our books and Our map and Our spare bed and this is where all the kids’ll sleep when they come over to Our house for blowout sleepovers and raging pillow fights.”

“We’re having them all over?”

“All the time ‘cause eventually they’ll be Our nieces and nephews and not just Your nieces and nephews.”

Happiness kicked up to another level, “I like that.”

“Good.” Next, he took her to the kitchen, “this is where we’ll eat Our takeout dinners and I’ll make Us coffee and you’ll make Us better coffee and we’ll share/fight/battle royale for the last Danish and we’ll wash Our dishes and scrub Our pots and put away Our groceries.”

Wondering how much longer she had until she’d begin to cry, “what about the living room?”

Guiding her there to stand in the middle of the empty room, “this is where we’ll have wild sex on Our couch and we’ll bring casefiles home and spread them out on Our coffee table and we’ll watch Our TV and fall asleep and I’ll wake you up at 3am and take you to Our bed to do it all over again.”

Damn it, a tear escaped but she was also grinning widely, “but aren’t we bringing your couch? It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t have your couch. A lot of things have started on that couch … and finished … and started again.”

“That’s the beauty of this whole thing, Scully. Anything we bring in here won’t be yours or mine anymore but Ours ‘cause I’m with you and you’re with me and everything is now an Us and an Ours and if you give me five more seconds, I’m gonna cry right with you.” Hugging her suddenly and very tightly, “welcome home, Agent Scully.”

“Welcome home, Agent Mulder.”


End file.
